


Multiples

by WhimsicalEthnographies



Series: Up Came the Sun [24]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Like I said you'll see, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Tony Stark Coparenting Peter Parker, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Canon Compliant, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, but also canon compliant, you'll see - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 06:06:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19145074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhimsicalEthnographies/pseuds/WhimsicalEthnographies
Summary: He can taste burning hair and flesh in the back of his throat, and it suddenly becomes clear why all the horror movies refer to humans as long pig.  His brain is betraying him, and that thought makes him want to retch, the sight in front of him makes him want to retch, Mr. Stark, Tony, is burning, the dust still hanging around them, stifling, and all Peter can do is cry as Pepper pulls him up…





	Multiples

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, firstly , this is not a fix-it, because as I’ve stated before, this series is in Earth-199999.1 POINT. ONE. (Don’t even get me started on that Earth 616, as stated by the known Lying Liar Whose Whole Thing is Lying.)
> 
> What this is is an attempt to bridge EG--it was garbage, they wrote everything around killing Tony, giving Steve his Prize in Segregationist America like any mediocre white man would like, and making there be a reason to travel back to the Battle of NYC. You don’t write a movie around fan-service, you write the movie then find the fan-service where you can--and this series, because my brain is all kinds of messy and won’t let me “move forward” without doing so. It’s not my best, not by a long shot, but it was cathartic and I needed to do it.
> 
> I don’t pretend to understand how time travel works, it’s something nobody will ever really understand, which is why I don’t spend half the story explaining the rationale only to break my own rules at the end for a dramatic turn-around scene. You don’t do time travel, and you certainly don’t have a five year gap, unless you can adequately explain and then MAINTAIN your rule-logic the entire movie. They shit on Back to the Future and then Back-to-the-Futured Steve with him not showing up on the platform again all old and married.
> 
> Now, enjoy this attempt to pull it in and explain while maintaining *this* timeline, where everyone used their brains and nobody went out of character and I won’t act like my main protagonist was “retired and happy” yet also somehow went from Mark L to Mark LXXXV in five years.
> 
> Enjoy and sorry for the mess, but it needed to be done.

_He can taste burning hair and flesh in the back of his throat, and it suddenly becomes clear why all the horror movies refer to humans as long pig. His brain is betraying him, and that thought makes him want to retch, the sight in front of him makes him want to retch, Mr. Stark,_ Tony, _is burning, the dust still hanging around them, stifling, and all Peter can do is cry as Pepper pulls him up…_

_“I’m sorry...T-tony…”_

_He hears it, when the last rush of air leaves Mr. Stark’s lungs, just as Pepper tells him he can rest. Those words make Peter cry harder, because that shouldn’t mean dying, and leaving everyone alone: Mr. Rhodes and Pepper and Morgan, who Mr. Stark told him about when he stopped in the chaos of a battle to hug him._ Morgan, just wait until you meet Morgan...she knows all about her big brother, Pete…

 _But apparently, for Mr. Stark, resting does mean death, and Peter hears that last rush of air, the last skip of his heartbeat, and then nothing. Pepper is crying, and he must be screaming because Mr. Rhodes grabs him tightly to hold him up. Every inhale brings dust into his lungs, blood and burning, and all he can see is the arc reactor, cold and dark. He tries to dart forward, but Mr. Rhodes grips his arm to stop him, metal wrapping around his waist to pull him close, and Peter has to get to Mr. Stark,_ he has to _but Mr. Rhodes won’t let him. His metal gauntlet comes up to Peter’s head to try and pull him against his chest; Peter grabs it, trying to pull it off, he has to get to Mr. Stark--_

“Peter!”

May screams and drops to the floor beside Peter’s bed. “PETER!”

He jolts, looking around in confusion. His eyes are blurry and burning but he can see the bars of the bed above him, but he can’t possibly be in his bedroom, because he can still smell the fire and smoke, and his ribs are burning where he landed on the debris after being dropped by Val, who was on a _flying horse_ \--

“Peter?” May pops up next to him; she’s holding her left arm close to her chest and slowly rotating her wrist. “Peter, it was just a dream, baby…”

“M-may?” Her name catches in his throat, because he shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t, he should be with Pepper and Mr. Rhodes at the Compound, with Mr. Stark… “How-how--”

“A dream, Peter,” May shifts on the floor and reaches over to brush Peter’s sweaty hair off his forehead. There’s no blood on her fingers when she pulls away, but there should be, he definitely hit his head, hard. It still hurts, radiating down the right side of his face.

“No, no, I was--” Peter inhales hard and when he does, he tastes it again, the ash and fire in the back of his throat, and he sees Mr. Stark, bleeding, immobile, the entire right side of his body charred beyond repair. His ribs scream as a sob rips out of him. “No, no no NO! Mr. Stark!”

“What?” May leans forward, reaching for him. “Peter, Tony is at the Tower.”

“No no no no! I saw it, I saw, I saw--”

“Baby, you had a bad dream, you’ve been here since he dropped you off…”

“He didn’t, he’s not--” Peter squeezes his eyes shut, but he’s still there, lying back against a crumbled wall, the arc reactor cold and dead. He presses his hands against his ears, the rush of pressure doing little to drown out the echoes of Mr. Stark’s heart skipping and stopping. “He’s-he’s-I have to--”

“Peter, you need to calm down,” May says sternly. The mattress dips as she moves up to sit. Peter feels her hands on his arms, the grip of the left weaker than the right. “Take a deep breath, honey, I promise, you had a dream.”

“No, May...he’s dead. I saw it. He’s dead!” Bile rises in the back of his throat, he just manages to choke it down before he throws up all over her. “He’s-he’s--”

“Peter, I really need you to take a deep breath,” May’s knees knock his as she scoots closer, and they hurt too. One of the robot-bug-dog-things definitely took a swipe at his knees.

“I’m-I’m not supposed to be here--” Peter lets May pull him close to her side. “Who brought me here? I need to go back!”

“Where else are you supposed to be?” She rubs his back as he chokes and sobs into her shoulder. 

“I-I was at the Compound--Mr. Stark--”

“Peter, Tony is right across the river. We can call him...”

“He’s not! He’s not…” he pulls away from May. “I have to--”

“Peter,” May grabs his shoulder, and he collapses into her. His sobs are unstoppable now. Peter can’t quite seem to pull in a full breath, he can’t be bothered. Mr. Stark is dead.

“He’s dead…”

“Baby,” May shifts under him, reaching for something in the pocket of her robe. She starts running her fingers through his hair, and his head sings as she hits where his skull slammed into the ground. Peter hears her start talking. 

“Tony? Yeah, no, he’s right here...no, I don’t know! He had a dream...he won’t calm down...something about how he’s not supposed to be here….he keeps saying you’re dead...no, I know...I know...yeah, I heard you drop him here...yeah, hang on…

“Pete?”

It’s Mr. Stark’s voice, coming from May’s phone. But it can’t be. He couldn’t talk. And now he’s dead.

“No-no--”

“Peter, he’s right here.”

“Peter, bud, I’m right here!”

“No! STOP!” Peter jumps away from May, into the corner of his bunk. “I saw it! He’s dead..” He buries his face in his hands. He can’t look at May. “He’s gone...I saw it. He’s dead.”

“Pete?”

“No, no no--”

“Peter, Tony is on the phone, he’s right here!”

“No, he’s not, he’s dead, he’s dead--”

“Baby, he’s not!”

“Pete, bud, I’m right here, I’m in Manhattan, I just saw you!”

“Noooo--”

“Peter, sweetheart, you need to take a breath…Tony, what the hell happened tonight?”

“Some jerk with a bag of tricks...he was fine, May!”

“He’s not, Tony, you can hear him!”

 

“Yeah, hang on, I’m activating the suit.”

 

“Hear that, Petey?” May reaches over and tries to pull Peter’s hands away from his face, but of course she can’t. “Tony’s on his way.”

 

“St-stop lying,” Peter hiccups. “I saw him!”

“Kiddo, I’ll be there is ten minutes,” the voice coming from the phone suddenly wavering in and out for a brief minute. “May, does it look like we’ll have to bring him back here?”

“I don’t know! Peter, sweetheart, could you look at me please?”

“NO…”

“Tony, just get here, please.”

“On my way. Kid,” the voice from the phone--it’s not Mr. Stark, it can’t be, Peter _saw_ \--says, “hang tight. I’ll be there in a few. I promise.”

Peter sobs into his elbow. He can’t believe him.

*******

May sits with him while he sobs, gently rubbing his shoulder, and knees where they’re tucked against his chest, and once the side of his head, but she stops that and huffs in confusion when he flinches in pain. Peter doesn’t know how long she sits there, he doesn’t really care, but she suddenly jumps up and races out of his room.

Somewhere, he hears a door open and close, footsteps and low, frantic voices, but Peter barely hears May charge into his room again, a second set of heavy, metallic footsteps behind her. 

His breath catches in his throat, he’d know those heavy footsteps anywhere.

“It’s not real, it’s not real,” he whispers to himself, pulling his knees closer to his chest. He didn’t hear the thrusters over the building, and Mr. Stark never wears the suit in the apartment, May doesn’t let him.

“Jesus--”

“Yeah.”

“Keep the suit on…”

“Hey, Pete?” The metal footsteps are loud, even through his heavy breathing and against the carpet, but the voice isn’t tinny. 

“You’re not real, your voice...the suit...you’re NOT REAL!”

“I’m real, Pete, I promise…” 

“Stop--” Peter’s senses tell him something is coming towards him, his arm, and before it can reach his wrist he reacts on instinct, grabbing and twisting it away from him.

“PETER!” 

Peter looks down to see his fingers pressing dents into a nanotech arm, cracks running up and down the gauntlet from the point where he squeezed. 

“You’re gonna go right through it if you keep squeezing, bud.”

Peter looks up to see Mr. Stark, in his suit, standing beside his mattress, bent towards him, his right arm out where Peter is gripping it. The helmet isn’t up. He’s blurry through his tears, but he can see the worry in his eyes, the gentle smile. “Hey.”

“Mr-Mr. Stark?”

“Yeah, Pete, we told you I was right here…”

“Mr. Stark,” Peter gasps, a sob tearing up through him. 

“You wanna let go so I can fit down there?” Mr. Stark gently shakes the gauntlet; Peter drops it in shock, because this looks real and it feels real, but it can’t be…even though now he can hear the whir of the reactor and smell oil and electricity and Pepper’s laundry detergent and Mr. Stark’s ridiculously expensive cologne he let him wear once, and then promptly laughed at. “There,” Mr. Stark smiles again, tapping his chest. The tech flies back into the housing unit with a *whoosh* of air that Peter feels pull on the wetness of his cheeks. 

“Now,” Peter watches, in shock, as he moves closer and gingerly perches on the edge of the bed. “Ok--ok, Pete!”

Peter barely hears Mr. Stark as he practically throws himself at him, almost knocking him off the edge of the bed. He looks real and he feels real, and he doesn’t smell like burning and electricity but Peter can still see it, the burns and the blood. He feels Mr. Stark’s heartbeat, strong and too fast, but it’s better than hearing it slow down, stutter, and stop.

“Mr. Stark,” Peter sobs, relief starting to battle the fear and despair in his head. He settles his arms around Peter’s back as he clings, making his fingers stick through his hoodie while he sobs into his shoulder. A tiny spark in the back of his mind tells him that he should be embarrassed, that he’s not a child but it was just so _real_. 

“Hey, hey, bud--Pete!” Mr. Stark grunts as Peter’s knee knocks into his bad thigh as he tries to scramble closer. Mr. Stark’s arms tighten around his back; it reminds him of when he hugged him after pulling him off the ground on Titan, which makes Peter cry harder, because that didn’t happen in what he saw. 

“Ok, kiddo, you--you’re starting to scare me here…”

“I told you it wasn’t like the others…” May whispers from the doorway behind them.

“Yeah, I can see that…” Mr. Stark grits out next to his ear, rubbing his shoulder gently. “Peter, I’m right here! You just saw me a few hours ago!”

“You-you’re de--you were, you were--” Peter can’t get the words out, they stick in his throat, where he can still taste the smoke and ash. It makes him gag through his tears, and Mr. Stark must feel it, because he jerks and tries to put a little space between them.

“Ok, kiddo, if you’re gonna puke you’re gonna need to unstick here…”

“No!”

“Ok, ok…”

“See, baby?” May steps up behind him and brushes her fingers through his hair. “Tony’s just fine.”

“He wasn’t,” Peter hiccups, hooking his chin over Mr. Stark’s shoulder. “He wasn’t fine. He wasn’t.”

“I am, bud,” Mr. Stark leans his head on Peter’s and continues to slowly rub his back. He’s speaking with a tone of voice Peter only hears when he’s hurt, or in spectacular danger...the tone he heard when Mr. Stark refused to leave his side on the Benatar, and after he’d seen the hologram recording, and when he was cooped up in a tiny hospital bed with a tube down his throat. The memory of Titan makes Peter choke up again. That didn’t happen in the dream. Mr. Stark wasn’t there. And then he died a few minutes after Peter saw him again.

“You weren’t--”

“Ok, but I am, I’m right here.”

“I know,” Peter whispers, shivering a little. “But it was so real. I could feel it.”

“Sometimes you can, Pete,” one of his hands lets go of Peter’s shoulders, and he hears May tiptoe out of the room and the creak of the door. “God, the dreams I’ve had…”

“No, it was--it was different, Mr. Stark,” Peter sniffs. “I could feel everything, and taste everything, and when I woke up I hurt--”

“Peter, sometimes--”

“N-no, Mr. Stark, I could _feel_ it. I hurt...where I got hurt, and..and you were dead.”

“You mean, where you got hit tonight?” Mr. Stark stiffens.

“No, where I got hit _there_.”

“And where exactly was _there_ , Peter?”

“I don’t know,” Peter presses his forehead against Mr. Stark’s shoulder. “I woke up, and Dr. Strange--”

“Oh, god, _of course--”_

“No, you weren’t there, but he was, and he did those yellow sparkly things he does all the time, and then we were at the Compound, but-but--” Peter coughs, “--it was like, bombed or something. And you hugged me and we-we all fought, like everyone, people I’ve never even seen, and Pepper was in a suit and th-then, and then--”

“Ok, slow down, bud,” Mr. Stark squeezes his shoulders and tries to push him away a little. Peter resists until one of Mr. Stark’s hands comes around to reach for his chin. “Peter, look at--no, look at me.”

Peter looks at him, but the words hurt, the words that Pepper said when Tony was boiling alive in front of them. “Tony…”

Mr. Stark smiles sadly at him addressing him by his first name; Peter doesn’t do it often. He’s tried to get him to, but it feels odd to Peter, less meaningful somehow. He’s always been Mr. Stark, and it makes Peter feel safe and secure to think that he’ll always be Mr. Stark, always there looking out for him and taking care of him if he needed it. _Mr. Stark_ is invincible. _Tony_ doesn’t feel that way.

“Ok, now I know it’s bad if we’re breaking out the first names, Mr. Parker,” he tries to joke, and 

Peter knows he’s doing it to try and calm him down, to tease, but it won’t work. Peter won’t let it work.

“You don’t understand! Mr. Stark!” Peter presses his forehead into his chest, tears dripping onto the housing unit.

“What don’t I understand, Peter?” Mr. Stark asks softly, hands rubbing his shaking shoulders. He can hear the skepticism in his tone, a grown-up gently patronizing a hysterical child.

“It was _real_ ,” Peter whispers. “I felt it. It was real.”

“Pete, it wasn’t real, I promise.”

“It was! Somewhere, it was.” He twists the bottom of Mr. Stark’s hoodie in his fingers. “And my ribs _hurt._ So does my head. _”_

“That sparkly shit hit you right in the side, bud,” Mr. Stark gently pushes him back to get a good look at him.

“It-it didn’t when I got home,” Peter hiccups. “Or when Dr. Strange did his thing.”

“Yeah, _his_ sparkly shit,” he starts to reach over to Peter’s right side to probe, but Peter grabs his hand. 

“And it’s the other side.”

Mr. Stark narrows his eyes. “What do you mean, your other side?”

“I mean my other side,” Peter snaps, hastily wiping his face. “I landed on my left side.”

“You fell when we were out?” Mr. Stark reaches over, gently pressing into his left flank, then pulls back when Peter hisses. 

“Ugh. No! I told you!” Peter coughs and bit and starts to shiver. He’s cold. “There. I landed on my left side and I hit my head.”

“And nothing hurt when you got home?” he narrows his eyes. “I know how you like to pretend nothing--”

“No!” Peter sniffs and wipes his eyes again. 

Mr. Stark sucks some air between his teeth and stares at Peter for a long moment. “No dizziness, nothing odd?”

“No,” he whines, more tears filling over. “Not until I went to sleep. Something happened, Mr. Stark. It was _real.”_

“Alright,” he nods, setting his jaw. “I think I’m gonna call Strange now, kiddo.”

“Why--?” Peter’s teeth start to chatter.

“Because when you got hit, something--” he shakes his head and clicks his tongue. “I don’t want to wait until the morning for you to get another once over,” Mr. Stark brushes some hair off Peter’s forehead, like he did when they were all bundled up on the Benatar, rushing back to Earth. He didn’t do that in his dream. In his dream Peter woke up and he was gone. “You’re kinda scaring me.”

“He-he said--”

“I know what he said. But I don’t trust his mumbo-jumbo,” Mr. Stark is blurry through Peter’s tears but he can tell his eyes are fixed on a spot on the wall behind him. 

“Then why--” Peter hiccups and roughly wipes his face. “--why now?”

“Because unfortunately his mumbo-jumbo is involved,” Mr. Stark sighs, his eyes shifting to look at Peter again. “So if I’m gonna be up at three o’clock in the morning, so is he.”

“I’m-I’m sorry…”

“Hey, none of that,” Mr. Stark grips the back of his head, fingers pressing into his skull. “We’ll figure it out,” his face softens. “No matter what this is. I’d just rather get a jump on it. Okay?”

Peter sniffs and nods, wiping his cheek again; he notices then his fingers are shaking. Mr. Stark doesn’t seem to be satisfied, because he moves his hand down to squeeze the back of his neck.

“Okay?” He raises his eyebrows, clearly expecting an answer.

“O-okay,” Peter chokes, sniffing and wiping away more tears. His wet cheeks feel raw under his fingers.

“Okay,” Mr. Stark whispers gently. “I’m gonna go let your aunt know--” Peter’s breath hitches and he must hear it because he quickly adds, “--I’ll leave the door open, and be right back.”

He pats the top of Peter’s head, then hauls himself off the bed with a grunt and heads out to find May. He leaves the door open, just like he promised. Peter scoots back into the corner, watching the triangle of light coming through the open door.

_Jesus._

Peter can hear them down the hall, whispering, as if they forgot he could hear them whispering from across the street.

_Yeah. It...it’s different than the other ones. He wouldn’t stop. It’s like when Ben was killed…_

_How’s your arm?_

_Oh, it’s fine. He just squeezed a bit too hard._

_I can have my staff look at it?_

_Oh, no, thanks Tony. But I’ll have them look at work tomorrow if it gets any worse. I don’t think it’s broken._

_You let me know_. Peter hears Tony sigh. He can picture him, leaning against the wall, one hand pinching the bridge of his nose, May standing opposite him in her robe, arms crossed over her chest. More tears fill his eyes. 

_Wait, Strange. The asshole with the cape?_

_You got it. Pete got hit with something, and he looked strange for a second. I could have swore he like, flickered. But Strange did a_ scan _or whatever you want to call it, didn’t see anything. Kid seemed fine. But I’m not so sure. Did he say anything when he got home?_

_No. He looked fine. Maybe tired?_

_Shit. Alright. Normally I’d just say it was a nightmare--_

_Yeah. Poor baby’s brain is really good at tormenting him._

_\--but just in case. I have an inkling...and I planned on calling him in the morning, but I don’t want to wait._

_Yeah, no. I agree. Should I put coffee on?_

_No. He’s a jerk. I could use a drink, though._

_I have Franzia rosé, strawberry Three Olives, and apple pie moonshine._

_Ugh. Pepper drinks that when she comes here?_

_They all get you drunk, Tony Stark._

_Franzia._

_Excellent choice, sir. A fine pairing for those fruit pies you can buy at a bodega, if you’d like_

_Yeah._

Peter hears May head down the hall, and Mr. Stark pull his phone out of his pocket. His stomach is still cramping with fear and the lingering bitterness of smoke and fire makes him wants to throw up, but the garbage can is all the way on the floor on the other side of the room and he’s tired. He’s so tired.

_Strange…yeah…yeah…I need you to come look at Peter again...no, he had a nightmare...oh, yeah, all the time...no, this one was different...he said he could taste it...those were his exact words...I had to come over here...almost broke May’s arm…_

Peter can’t hold the sob in. He almost hurt May. He hurt May he hurt May he hurt May. And then Mr. Stark had to keep the armor on. It was just _so_ real.

_...yeah, I know...is there any chance...no, no, I know it sounds insane but...yeah…yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too. Alright. Just give us like twenty-minutes._

Peter hears the beep as Mr. Stark hangs up, and more footsteps. A few seconds later he’s pushing through the bedroom door, and makes a beeline for Peter’s bunk.

“Still awake?” He leans against the frame, hand reaching down to tap Peter’s cheek.

“Never sleeping again,” Peter sniffs, hard.

“Ugh, bud, I heard that go right down your throat,” Mr. Stark makes a face, and leans over to Peter’s desk to grab a tissue for him. “I’m not holding it for you,” he deadpans, holding the tissue out, and Peter can’t help his small smile.

“Thank you, Mr. Stark,” he whispers, taking the tissue. _Please let this be real_ he thinks.

******

“Peter, I assure you, this is real,” Dr. Strange lets go of Peter’s chin, and turns to May and Mr. Stark, who are perched on the old sofa. “And there’s nothing physically wrong with him. From a either a medical, or….metaphysical, standpoint, right now.”

“What about existentially?” Mr. Stark sits forward on the sofa, waving his--third, Peter thinks--glass of wine in the air.

“I’m not trained in philosophy, Stark,” Dr. Strange smirks, then looks back at Peter and pats his knee. “So I can’t speak to that. But,” he speaks to Peter, “I can assure you this is real, and you don’t have to worry about whatever your dream was, or wherever you were.”

Peter feels his face morph into a frown, he can’t help it; he’s never liked being spoken to like a child. Before he can snap back--he has express permission from both May and Mr. Stark to act like a petulant child around Dr. Strange, Mr. Stark jabs a finger in his direction.

“What do you mean, _wherever_ , Doc?” His eyes narrow. “The kid was in his bed…”

“Well,” Dr. Strange turns back to Peter, and looks him directly in the eye. He feels himself shrink under his gaze; it’s piercing in a way that’s unnerving, as if he can look directly into his brain and see the synapses firing. “I have some theories, but I won’t be entirely sure until I can track down our troublemaker--”

“Well, then spit them out,” May jumps off the sofa and comes over to stand behind the overstuffed chair Peter is in. “What’s wrong with my nephew?” Peter feels her begin to stroke his hair, her nails gently scratching against his scalp. She always does this when he has nightmares, she has since he was little and was dumped on their doorstep by the social worker who smelled like cigarettes and pickles. 

“Nothing is _wrong,_ Mrs. Parker,” Dr. Strange looks up at her. “But, I think, and this is just a theory, but whatever spell hit Peter may have caused him to astral-project at time when his brain activity was...less controlled.”

“Less controlled?”

“He was asleep,” Dr. Strange shrugs as if the entire concept is simple. Peter looks over to Mr. Stark, whose face turns completely white. He downs the rest of his glass of wine in one gulp and grimaces.

“Kind of sounds like that’s a whole lot of wrong, to me, Doc,” he stands up from the couch and walks over to box of wine on the counter in the open kitchen. “Especially since he’s not staying _here_.”

“What-what does that mean?” Peter looks back at Dr. Strange. He agrees with Mr. Stark--it does not sound like nothing is wrong.

“Well, it’s rather hard to explain, Peter, but in simple terms, your essence, your soul, really, took a field trip from your body,” he pats Peter’s knee. “We do it all the time, it’s not inherently dangerous.”

“Yeah, but you know what you’re doing!” Mr. Stark stalks back into the living room, glass full. “He was asleep! And he didn’t stay here!”

“No, he didn’t,” Dr. Strange sighs. “Which is another thing I need to research. It takes skill to control access to even the astral plane, let alone other places in the multiverse. There must be a rip somewhere.”

“Oh, lovely. A random rip in the universe? Great!” Mr. Stark snarls, and May reaches over to grab his wine glass before he hurls it at the carpet.

“Well, the universe has seen some trauma recently, Stark. We live quite a delicate existence.”

“Will it happen again?” Peter looks at Dr. Strange’s hand, which is still on his knee. His scars look brighter under the lights of the living room.

“I don’t know.”

Peter feels May’s fingers freeze in his hair. “You don’t know? What if he gets stuck?”

“He won’t. That I feel confident about,” Dr. Strange finally pulls his hand away, and even though he never particularly liked him, it makes Peter feel untethered. He wants to turn in the chair to find Mr. Stark, but before he can he steps out into the living room, and glares at the back of Dr. Strange’s head. His face is still white, and he looks like he’s about to throw up. Peter feels like he’s going to throw up.

“You _feel_ confident?”

Dr. Strange turns on his ottoman, but Peter catches him rolling his eyes. He’s not sure if the look is meant to commiserate with him over Mr. Stark’s hovering, or if it’s just for himself. Peter likes Mr. Stark’s hovering, right now.

“Yes, Tony, I do. I don’t know what the spell was, but there’s nothing lingering that I can detect. And Peter is right here, all of him. He absolutely could not maintain a projection while his brain is occupied with keeping himself awake--he’d snap back, like a rubberband. And if he doesn’t,” he takes a deep breath. “Call me and I’ll pull him back.”

“Oh, great,” Mr. Stark throws up his arm and reaches for his wine glass, which is still in May’s hand. He gulps down the rest of the wine and hands the glass back, then stomps over to the chair Peter is huddled in. “What about Wong? Can he do other--” he makes finger quotes, “--spells to check?”

“No, Tony. He’d do the same as me,” Dr. Strange looks directly back at Peter. “I promise Peter, you are in the universe you belong, and anywhere you go, you’ll come right back. But I don’t think you will.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere else,” Peter picks at his knee. “It was terrible. Mr. Stark was _dead.”_

“He’s very much alive here, Peter,” Dr. Strange reaches out to pat his arm. “And here is what’s important.”

“What do you think ha-appened in that universe, Dr. Strange?” Peter whispers. 

“Pete--” Mr. Stark’s hand lands on his shoulder.

“I don’t know, Peter,” Dr. Strange shakes his head a bit wistfully. “The smallest decisions can have universal consequences, and I daresay most things turn out exactly how they are supposed to be.”

“When I was, when we--you-you said it’d been five years…”

“Then I have to assume five years was necessary, there. Playing with time can have enormous consequences...if events weren’t set off immediately, the consequences of entirely erasing five years is something no mortal, or Titan, should ever have to contemplate. I don’t want to right now, and I have no decisions to make. ”

“Frankly, I’m a little embarrassed about Other Universe Me,” Mr. Stark shakes his head. “Five fucking years.”

“It’s entirely possible the five years was out of your hands, Tony,” Dr. Strange nods sympathetically. 

“But you said it was four years, here?” Peter looks over at Mr. Stark, who has graduated from his wine to a cup of coffee.

“Not exactly, bud,” he winces. “It was four years of time for _us_ , stopping and starting over each time we screwed up...but it was only a few weeks before we got down to business.”

“Not nearly as much collateral damage.”

“Oh, there was plenty of collateral damage already,” Mr. Stark chuckles darkly. “Shit, nearly all of North Carolina became uninhabitable before Carol even got us back. About six--.”

“Yes, well,” Dr. Strange interrupts him and pushes himself up from the ottoman. “What’s done is done, here and there.” He looks over at May, who has her own cup of coffee. “May, if he has any particularly vivid dreams, wake him up and call me immediately. I want to see if I can trace anything.”

“And he’ll wake up?”

“Yes, May. Maintaining an astral form requires intense concentration, which Peter, while capable of many amazing feats, would not consciously be able to maintain,” he looks down at Peter, eyes narrowed, and Peter wants to curl into a ball. The way he’s been examining him does not make him feel particularly confident. “But, if there are any tears or pathways, I want to know about them. And perhaps visit myself. See this universe where the one chance was different than ours.” He sighs. “If what I said was true, and five years were allowed to happen, I have a feeling the loss of Tony Stark is far down on the list of crises in the world.”

“Maybe for everyone else,” Peter mumbles, pulling his feet up onto the chair as Mr. Stark rubs his shoulder. It would be number one on his list of _crises_ , no matter what else happened. 

“Peter,” to his surprise, Dr. Strange’s face softens. “I promise, you are where you belong, and you will stay here. When someone is removed from their universe, the consequences are dire if not returned almost immediately. Things far more powerful than any of us see to that.” He glances up at Mr. Stark. “The multiverse has its ways of righting things.”

“Are we in the main universe?”

Dr. Strange chuckles. “Yes, for us.” He pats Peter’s shoulder as he steps by. “Stark, I’ll be in touch if I find anything. And...I can’t believe I’m saying this, but please call if there’s anything in particular you’re concerned about.”

“That’s it?” His arm tightens around Peter’s shoulder. May comes to sit on the other arm of the chair. “We just wait it out?”

“Yes,” Dr. Strange sighs. “He’s in no physical danger. If it would make you feel better,” he shrugs thoughtfully, “Peter can can stay at the Sanctum for a few days. But I’d ask--”

“That’s ok,” Peter jumps in. “I’d rather stay here, or at the Tower.” He doesn’t want to go to the Sanctum. It’s dark and smells like tea and the inside of a church; not bad smells, exactly, but not something he wants to smell all day. And the WiFi is terrible; Mr. Wong explained once it was because all their “energy” interfered with it. He’d offered him an ethernet cable to attach directly to the router but Peter would rather have no internet than be tethered to a wall.

“And that’s perfectly fine,” he looks directly at Mr. Stark. “Have I ever steered you in the wrong direction?”

“What universe are you asking about?”

Dr. Strange smirks. “Touche. May, thank you for the hospitality. Hopefully next time it will be under better circumstances.”

“It damn well better be,” May strokes the top of Peter’s head.

“Remember, call,” he nods once more, and with a flick of his wrist a yellow portal swallows him, the force of it blowing papers off the small coffee table.

********

“Mr. Stark?” Peter whispers into the darkness of his bedroom. Mr. Stark is in the bottom bunk, not quite willing to leave, despite Dr. Strange telling them that everything was fine. Peter is glad; nothing feels fine. He can still smell everything, still taste everything, and his brain feels like it’s on fire.

“He’s sleeping.”

“Mr. Stark,” Peter frowns and rubs his swollen eyes. 

“What, Peter?” Mr. Stark grunts from below him.

“How do we know this is the real one?”

“Hmmmm?” 

“Like,” Peter whispers, and feels tears sting at the corners of his eyes again. He rolls on his side and whispers into the darkness of the room. “What if this isn’t the real universe...what if we’re a side one because something was taken from this one?”

“You heard the wizard. It’s the real one to us, bud. Because we’re in it,” he clears his throat. “And I’m not trying to sound like a jerk, but don’t worry about any other possible Peters in any other possible universes. You need to worry about the one in this universe.”

“But,” Peter swallows, and tastes the acrid smoke and burning metal and ozone in the back of his throat. “What if I’m one of those ones? What if--” the panic rises hot and sharp back into his chest, and he feels more tear leaks onto to his face. “--what if I’m one of those and this is a dream, and this universe isn’t real at all, and I wake up and--”

“Ok,” Mr. Stark cuts him off and drags himself off the bottom mattress. “I put my foot down when you get to _dreams-within-dreams,_ kiddo.” He reaches over to flick on the lamp on Peter’s desk. The light is bright and painful, and Peter’s skull sings, but he can’t bear to close his eyes. Mr. Stark was dead. He was so sure of it. He can see it, _smell_ it, feel the heat radiating off the cracked casing of the Iron Man suit. The suit that Mr. Stark had once bragged was able to absorb the energy of the Chernobyl explosion when they took on some maniac who shot electricity at them.

Peter is hit with a new wave of tears, his breath rushing out of his lungs in a desperate heave. Mr. Stark leans on the post of the bed, his eyes shiny and his face heavily lined with concern. Peter can still see the blood and burns in the back of his mind’s eye, the way he twitched and shook as he tried to hold on for a few more minutes, the way his arm tried to lift when Peter started crying, the way Pepper had to pull him away so she could tell Tony to let go...

“Pete,” Mr. Stark stands right next to the bunk, reaching out to wipe his face with the sleeve of his shirt. Peter’s resolve breaks when he touches him, eyes squeezing shut as more sobs wrack his body. “Hey, hey--”

“It was so real,” Peter chokes, wrapping his arms around himself to stop the shaking. He feels so cold, as he looks up at Mr. Stark, the concern so plainly written across his face. “I can st-still, still smell it--”

“Yikes,” Mr. Stark whispers, grimacing. He rubs his hand up and down Peter’s arm, and it would be comforting if his hand wasn’t cold, as cold as he feels, as cold as his hand felt when Peter held it while he was dying. He presses his lips together. 

“It was s-so-so stupid,” Peter squeezes his eyes shut. “Your helmet wasn’t even on. And you just to-took them, and...somebody else could have done it! Thor or Ms. Danvers or even me! But I was too far--”

“And I would have never let you,” Mr. Stark says softly. “You heard what the doc said, Peter. Sometimes, things have to happen--”

“No!” Peter yells, too loudly, and Mr. Stark flinches slightly as he pushes himself up on one arm. “It didn’t have to happen! It didn’t happen here!”

“Kiddo, you gotta calm down or I’m gonna put the suit on…”

“Then put it on!” Peter throws his arms up; Mr. Stark takes a step back as his knuckle hits the ceiling, puncturing a neat little hole in the drywall. “FUCK!” Peter pulls his hand back, cradling it against his chest. It’s bleeding, and smears against his t-shirt. “Fuck…”

“Alright,” Mr. Stark starts softly, “you’re gonna wake up your aunt. Then you’re going to have to explain the hole in the ceiling before we get a chance to fix it.” He steps back to the bunk and reaches for Peter’s hand. “Let me see.”

“‘S fine…” Peter holds out his hand; the skin has already started to close.

“Hmmm,” Mr. Stark flicks his hand, and a gauntlet materializes around his fingers. Antiseptic spray--included from the Mark LX on--lightly coats Peter’s knuckle. He reaches over and gently plucks the last tissue from the box on the desk. “There,” he wipes the clear liquid and blood off, revealing a patch of new, pink skin.

“What happened?” Peter whispers, examining his knuckle.

“Pete--”

“You said you would tell me someday,” Peter sniffs and pulls a balled up tissue out of his sweatpants pocket. “Dr. Strange just said I saw another universe. I know what happened there. What happened here?”

Mr. Stark sighs and slumps back over to fall into the desk chair. He tosses the bloody tissue on the desk and rubs his hand over his face. “You really wanna know?”

 _No._ “Yes.”

“Well, Carol got us back. That much Neb told me. Well, you know, we were drifting for about three weeks, out of food and water and soon to be air, before I kind of...went off the deep end? Just stopped saving to my hard drive? I don’t know. And when we got back…” Peter hears him swallow hard. “It was...Jesus.” Mr. Stark blows out a breath. “You watched the last episode of _Chernobyl_ , right?”

“Yeah…”

“Imagine that, but like, half the world. Everything was chaos. That purple scrotum snapped away half of life, but there were plenty of other things that took millions more. Planes falling out of the sky...thousands of square miles immediately uninhabitable. I think there was even a missile incident over in India.”

“You think?” Peter remembers what Mr. Stark told him, a few days after everything was righted. _I was in a fog_.

“I couldn’t tell you what happened in those few weeks, bud. I know Cap and Nat went off to California, found Pym’s van. Apparently Nat had been keeping tabs on Scott while they were on the run, they had Bruce trace the energy of his,” Mr. Stark makes a face and finger quotes, “ _Pym Particles_ after calling Carol. I know they came back, tried to get into the house in the Adirondacks . Pep and Happy kept them out. Rhodey went with them. I could have blown his head off.” Mr. Stark chuckles darkly. “I’m glad I didn’t.”

“Where was May?”

“Somewhere south of Buffalo. Pep got her out of the city. Indian Point hadn’t gone yet, but if it did we wanted to make sure we were all far enough out to get to wherever--” Mr. Stark shrugs. “--wherever hadn’t blown yet. Most power comes from the falls there, and she had college friends who weren’t dusted. I think May was more out of it than I was when we sent her. Thank God Pep was smart enough to get as much as she could liquidated like, immediately.”

“And you just stayed there?” 

“Yep. I wasn’t kidding when I said I was done, bud. I probably would have just laid down and died on the lawn if they’d let me.”

“That’s what MJ always said she’d do if there was an apocalypse,” Peter huffs and sniffs. “Finish everything in her mom’s liquor cabinet, then put on her Steve Madden chunky loafers and just lay down and die. Said she didn’t want to live in a barter society fighting wolves and doomsday cults”

“She’s a smart one, although I’d always assumed she’d end up the Alpha of some roaming group of land pirates.” 

“I think those are just called thieves, Mr. Stark.”

“Fair,” Mr. Stark points at him, eyebrows raised as if to make a point about MJ’s virtues, then sighs again. “There just didn’t seem to be a point. The world was melting and exploding around us. Hundreds of thousands were dying every day, entire countries were without power, it was only a matter of time until food chains collapsed...more plants would have exploded, arsenals would have gone off. Probably a massive extinction event, moreso, within a few years.

“But Pep was secretly talking to Rhodey. And she dug that photo out, that I didn’t even know she’d taken. And that was that.”

Peter feels warm for the first time since he was hit with those sparkly green things. He knows, he does, what he means to Mr. Stark. The suits and the letters of recommendation and the t-shirt hanging on the bedpost that says _Big Brother,_ the fact that Mr. Stark is here and was trying to sleep on the bottom of his bunk are all a testament to that. But it’s overwhelming to think that the memory of him essentially saved the universe.

“Don’t you dare start crying again,” Mr. Stark deadpans, interrupting Peter’s reverie. “I already told you that story, and you’re out of tissues,” he smirks, shaking the empty box from Peter’s desk. 

“Sorry,” Peter manages to giggle, sniffing a bit.

“Ah ah! The rules don’t change just because you took a field trip to another universe.”

“Fine,” Peter smiles, for real. “Thank you.”

“Thank Pepper, kid,” Mr. Stark shakes his head; he almost looks ashamed of himself, his eyes glinting and turning sad in the harsh light.

“What exactly did you do then?”

“I got mad,” Mr. Stark shrugs. “Screamed my head off, threw shit. Pepper just stood there until I was done. They she told me what Rhodey told her: Pym’s quantum machine could fix it. They just couldn’t get where and when they needed to go. They affected themselves, but they stayed _here_ ,” He waves his hand. “The specs are all written down somewhere. But that was the start of four years of rewinding and fast-forwarding.”

“Why’d it take so long?”

“Because he knew. He always knew,” Mr. Stark shakes his head, as if he still can’t believe it. “The first time, before the time shit, they’d gone off and he’d destroyed the stones. So we tried to pinpoint before then, before he took the Mind Stone from Vision, right after--he managed before Thor went for his head somehow, before he destroyed them...God, dozens of times. And then we’d have to make pit stops to grab whoever bit it in the latest attempt. One time only Nebula got away, and she said it took her almost two months to figure out when to go to grab us. But whenever we went for him, he was always waiting.”

“How did he know?” Peter wipes his eyes again, but his tissue is in shreds. He’ll have to start using his sleeve if he doesn’t want to get up.

“Dunno, Pete. Time Stone, Mind Stone? Soul Stone? He had the power of the universe in is hand, even if the gauntlet itself was mostly destroyed. “He knew. Somehow, no matter how much we tried to rewind, he knew. The last one, he wasn’t in his garden or whatever the fuck it was anymore. But he had the stones still.”

“How did you figure it out?”

“We didn’t, really,” Mr. Stark leans forward on his knees. “But Nebula noticed he started to get angrier and angrier. Like he was exasperated we kept trying. At first it seemed like he was playing with us, bringing back his old cronies, using illusions, shit, he even fucked around with Carol’s cat...which just FYI, isn’t actually a cat. So be careful.”

“That explains why she makes my Spidey sense go off,” Peter giggles. He was always confused by it, but Goose is just so cute. He’d always thought he was just off because of the whole brought-back-to-life thing.

“Your spidey--Jesus Christ, Peter,” Mr. Stark pinches the bridge of his nose. “We’ll talk about it some other time. Anyway, after like, the thirtieth of some shit time, Nebula got the impression he was done, and it’d be it. We planned for it, found his energy source. It was this giant Coliseum thing, in an asteroid field. I’d been there before, when--”

“When you flew in the wormhole.”

“Yeah,” Mr. Stark blows out a hard breath. “He fixed it, or made it seem like it was fixed..I don’t know, he didn’t have the gauntlet anymore, so it must have just been the Reality Stone. But the whole thing, it was...it was a blur. I couldn’t tell you exactly what happened. He got Clint, because he dove in first. But it gave us a second. I’d been hit and Thor was going after his with his ax, and Neb just cut his head off,” he snaps his fingers. “One shot, I think Steve and Nat got her close and she bounced off the shield to him. And everything just vanished. The stone, I guess. I don’t know why or how we got lucky. Whole thing took like twenty minutes.”

“He underestimated you.”

“He underestimated Nebula. Never saw her coming,” Mr. Stark chuckles. “I’m glad it was her. Don’t ever ask her about her childhood.”

“I don’t think she’d tell me anyway. When she’s here just kind of looks at me and grunts one word then gives me weird space-candy.”

“Heh, that means she likes you, bud.”

“Yeah, I know,” Peter smiles to himself. He doesn’t tell Mr. Stark that Nebula messages him several times a week, including to warn him that he’d better be making sure _Stark is getting enough sleep and drinking water._ And she always answers his messages. He wipes his cheek again; his face is stiff and swollen around his smile.

“Well, thank her after you thank Pepper. Because he was dead and the stones were just there. I think we spent more timing staring at them than we did actually fighting. Finally. They were right there. Four years of time for all of us…” Mr. Stark gestures up to the bed. “For you! And we had no idea what to do.

“So I took them. Or, I reached out and they took me? I don’t know,” he shakes his head again, and it’s clear to Peter that he still can’t wrap his mind around it. “everything was theoretical. The gauntlet was destroyed, but the nanites...you know, the reactor is based on Project Pegasus?”

 

“The Space Stone?” Ms. Danvers had explained it to him once, while she was roasting marshmallows for him in her hand at the compound. 

“Yeah,” Mr. Stark sniffs in a sort-of-not-really laugh. “They settled in, like it was their decision. Cap tried to stop me, and so did Bruce--but it was like they needed _me_...and Carol grabbed on to my arm. It was all theoretical. I remember Bruce telling her to grab me, and he told me later that he was hoping that between the suit’s energy absorption module, the reactor, and Carol there to suck up what she could, maybe I’d survive,” he shrugs and clicks his tongue. “And it worked. Pretty much scrambled my arm, and my teeth on that side still hurt, but it worked.”

“Chernobyl.”

“Ten Chernobyls. One hundred, a million. Thank God, the stones, whatever, that we had Carol this time.”

“Other Universe You is stupid,” Peter snorts. Of course. The scenario flits through his head, and it makes all the sense in the world. 

“Yeah, he is. I’m not kidding when I say I’m embarrassed. You deserve a better mentor. One who wouldn’t fuck around for five years. And one who remembered his new best friend who can literally absorb a nuclear blast.”

“But Dr. Strange said something must have happened, and the five years was necessary…” Peter snorts, in spite of himself. “And, to be fair, you didn’t know if it would work…”

“Ok, I know you’re the President of the Iron Man Defense Squad or whatever you call it, but you don’t have to defend Other Universe Me,” Mr. Stark smiles up at him, Peter thinks a bit sadly. “Because we didn’t know what would work. We’d all already bit it so many times, but like I said we all kind of knew that whatever happened with this one, it’d be permanent. Which is why I made that hologram that I should have erased as soon as we got back,” Mr. Stark smiles up at him, the lines of his face darker in the light from the desk lamp. “Apparently This Universe Me can have his moments too.”

Peter smiles again, for real, and Mr. Stark looks awfully pleased with himself for it. “What did you wish for?”

Mr. Stark cocks an eyebrow and raises his arms, gesturing to the room around them as he swivels in the desk chair a bit. 

“No, I mean...what exactly? What did you say?”

He sighs. “I didn’t know what wouldn’t fuck everything up. So I said, _help me fix what he did_.”

“That’s it?” Peter tucks his hand under his pillow. There’s another balled up tissue there. It’s gross, but less so than the soggy shreds in his hand.

“That’s it, kiddo,” Mr. Stark settles his palms on his knees. “Everything was a mess, even though it’d technically only been a few weeks for the rest of the universe. Babies born, people died of other things, all over. Food and resources, populations halved and then redoubled? I couldn’t make the decision of what was acceptable, what wasn’t. I shouldn’t be allowed to wax on the ethics of killing an ant hill, let alone the fate of the universe So I asked to fix it. Let the powers that be decide.” Mr. Stark looks off into a spot on the wall behind Peter somewhere, his eyes slightly unfocused. “ _Help me fix it_.”

“And what happened?”

“I was on Titan, and you were crying. The left side of my body hurt like a bitch, I couldn’t move my fingers. Then Thor showed up on that rainbow bridge of his and we went home. Apparently the Universe decided what was best and did it. And nobody can find Thanos.”

“You fixed it,” Peter exhales, and scoots closer to the edge of his mattress. “You just...fixed it.”

“And survived!” Mr. Stark leans back in the chair. “But essentially, yeah. We got back, nobody but us remembered, and everything was fine. According to Carol and Quill and Neb, everywhere else is fine. It’s just... _fine.”_

“I’ll take fine,” Peter rubs his nose with the last shreds of his pillow- tissue. His skin still feels hot and raw. “Maybe that’s what it had to be. Just _fine.”_

“Maybe,” Mr. Stark nods thoughtfully at the carpet. “Because there’s a whole lot of shit I still wish I could fix.”

“But you didn’t,” Peter pushes himself up on one elbow. “You didn’t ask for more. Maybe that’s why they went to you. Didn’t Dr. Strange say they had a mind of their own?”

“Yeah, he did, at that ridiculous Fury debrief. By the way,” Mr. Stark raises one eyebrow. “You’re not answering his calls, right?”

“Right to voicemail, like you said.”

“Good boy,” he leans back into the chair, groaning. He rubs his hands over his face. “And that’s how we saved the universe.”

“You know,” Peter sniffs, and his tissue officially disintegrates when he wipes his nose again. “Hearing it...it’s kind of anticlimactic.”

“Yeah,” Mr. Stark snorts and frowns at him. “I skipped over the exciting parts.”

“Why do you think it was four years for me too?”

“Probably the same reason you’re the only one who remembers it?”

“So you have no idea,” Peter flops back down. At least his pillow is starting to dry.

“”No-pe,” Mr. Stark blows out a hard breath and pushes off the chair, tucking it back under the desk. He flicks off the desklamp and feels his way over to the bed, crawling onto the lower bunk. “You can ask Strange when we call him tomorrow.”

“I did already. He said he didn’t know,” Peter glances behind himself; through the window he can random street lights flicker on as lone cars pass under them. The city is normal. Everything is _fine._ “He said, _some things we aren’t meant to know._ ”

“Then you got me, kiddo. I wish...” Mr. Stark grunts as he tries to get comfortable on the narrow bed, “...I had an answer for you, but I don’t right now.”

“Hmmm. When did you make Pepper her suit?”

“Oh, years ago,” he sighs, then Peter hears him flip on his side. “She never used it, until then. Rhodey told me she...helped, before Carol got us back. He said they called her _Rescue.”_

“That’s a nice name,” Peter turns on his back. He can see the small knuckle-shaped hole in the ceiling and frowns.

“Yeah, it is,” Mr. Stark agrees. “Only Pep. And maybe _you_.”

“Maybe,” Peter scratches his sticky cheek. He’s going to look terrible tomorrow. “I mean, what else was she gonna do?”

“Pine in a deep despair forever?”

“Mr. Stark,” Peter rolls his eyes even though he knows he can’t see. 

“I’m joking, kiddo,” Mr. Stark sighs. “She helped a lot of people--”

“Like May.”

“--like May,” Mr. Stark agrees. “I’m glad one of us was doing something, at least.”

“You did something, Mr. Stark,” Peter rolls to look over the edge of the bed again. “And you didn’t wait five years.”

“Got me there. Jesus Christ. Five fucking years. I wonder what other Shitty Universe Mes there are.”

“Do you think there’s one where you’re not Iron Man?” Peter flips his pillow and punches it a few times, then flops down and eyes the sliver of light coming under the bedroom door.

“Probably.”

“Do you think there’s one where I’m not Spider-man?”

“God, I hope so,” he chuckles.

“Mr. Stark!”

“What?” he raps the rails under Peter’s mattress. “Do I hope there’s a universe where you don’t climb walls and jump off skyscrapers and do stupid shit every day? Of course I do.”

“Then we might have never met, and then I wouldn’t have been your inspiration to save the goddamn--”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. _The smallest decisions can have universal consequences._ Don’t read too much into it, Spider-baby,” there’s a hard thump to the underside of the mattress; Peter thinks he kicked it.

“Not a baby,” Peter turns his wrist so the glowing red numbers on his black watch show. It’s almost five in the morning. “Do I have to go to school tomorrow?”

“You know I’m not allowed to decide that, Pete,” Mr. Stark chuckles. “All sick days need to be approved by your aunt. And,” Peter hears him shift again on the bed. He’d feel bad if he wasn’t so terrified of him going back to the Tower. “I think if you’re settled enough to play Twenty Questions, you’re settled enough to try and sleep.”

“But--”

“I’ll wake you up if I need to,” Mr. Stark reassures gently. “No skipping off to other universes on my watch.”

“I’m not gonna be able to sleep,” Peter frowns at the ceiling and throws one hand over the edge of the mattress. “And there’s no point, now.”

“Then lay quietly with your eyes closed. It’s better than nothing. Trust I know from experience.”

“Fine.”

“That’s all we need to be, bud,” Mr. Stark reaches up and squeezes his dangling hand. “Sleep.” I’ll let May know you were up until after five.”

“Thanks, Mr. Stark.”

“Anytime, Pete. Now go. To. Sleep.”

Peter is silent for a few moments, staring at his knuckle-hole in the ceiling. There’s one thing he is honestly curious about, really truly curious, and not only because he needs to know what disaster they narrowly missed. “Mr. Stark?”

“What. Peter.”

“What are you gonna name the baby?”

“Nice try, Sam Spade,” Mr. Stark snorts. “You know we’re keeping it a surprise.”

“Is it Morgan?” Peter whispers into the dark room, then pulls himself over to the edge of the mattress to look at the bottom bunk.

Mr. Stark doesn’t answer him for a long minute. “No.” He glares up at him in the low light of the room. “Did Pepper tell you?”

“No,” Peter lays back down. “But Bad Universe You called her Morgan so I guessed.”

“What else did Bad Universe Me say?”

“Not much,” Peter scratches his cheek again. “You told me to stay close and be careful.”

“Sounds like me...wait, that’s it?”

“And you hugged me,” Peter shrugs to himself. “I mean, there was a whole-ass battle going on. And you probably thought we’d have more--”

“Don’t,” Mr. Stark interrupts softly. “Don’t say it, don’t think about it. Not tonight. Just try and sleep. I’ll be here in the morning.”

Peter blinks rapidly and keeps his eyes focused on the tiny hole in his ceiling. “Thanks, Mr. Stark.”

Mr. Stark yawns. “Anytime, kid. Now sleeeeep.”

Peter closes his eyes, one lone tear sneaking out and down his sore cheeks. Maybe this time, he’ll go someplace nice. But really, he’d be happy with _fine._

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, remember how Carol can canonically absorb the power of a nuclear bomb? Huh.
> 
> The timeline somehow split when Nat realized she remembered Scott saying something about the Quantum Realm and how she gathered all the info she could on the Pyms throughout her long career of knowing everything about everybody and she dragged Steve out of his he-lost-his-best-friend-AGAIN-despair to find the van. No Deux Ex Rat-china here!
> 
> I tried to touch on some of the questions I had about The World After The Snap and how disastrous it would be. Who remembers that Russian Nuclear False Alarm in 1983? Anybody watch Chernobyl? It's best not to think about the things that for sure would have happened.
> 
> Like I said, I’m not an expert in time travel, so there will probably be holes but like I said, I didn’t spend significant scenes explaining the rules. There's a reason Tony skipped over the exciting parts. I’m also not an ethicist, so hey! Those stones, that literally make up all the powers of the Universe, one of which we are told has a mind of its own, are gonna decide what happens. That moral quandary is one of the reasons most works don't do huge time jumps. The implications of no matter what you do are too big to comprehend.
> 
> And Steve stayed right where he belonged, honoring Peggy and her wish that he move on.
> 
> And don’t even get me started on what they did to Tony Stark’s kid. Morgan Stark deserved better than what they did to her. Everyone deserved better than what they did to her.
> 
> Now, let us never speak of this again.
> 
> Unless I do an actual fix-it that I have the barest inkling of because THERE’S SO MANY CANONICAL WAYS THEY COULD HAVE DONE IT.
> 
> AND ANOTHER THING, there were several times they could have gone to with the stones all together, including the one where Thor would have killed him--Stormbreaker went right through the power produced by all six stones--if only he'd AIMED AT THE RIGHT PLACE.
> 
> Or maybe like, three minutes AFTER he snapped? He was still on that planet guys! 
> 
> GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.


End file.
